Chef Tiffany Derry hopes to open a Beaumont eatery

Syd Kearne, Beaumont Enterprise

By Syd Kearney

Updated 5:20 pm, Thursday, November 15, 2012

Top Chef star Tiffany Derry organizes dishes and workers in the Beaumont Club kitchen during her pop-up restaurant Friday night. Derry commented that she hopes to have a restaurant in Beaumont within a year.
Photo taken Friday, November 9, 2012
Guiseppe Barranco/The Enterprise
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Top Chef star Tiffany Derry organizes dishes and workers in the...

Top Chef star Tiffany Derry organizes dishes and workers in the Beaumont Club kitchen during her pop-up restaurant Friday night. Derry commented that she hopes to have a restaurant in Beaumont within a year.
Photo taken Friday, November 9, 2012
Guiseppe Barranco/The Enterprise
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Four hours before the opening of her much-anticipated pop-up restaurant, Tiffany Derry is determined to be more than a one-night stand in her hometown.

"I've been wanting to do this for three years," she said. "I want a place that involves my Mom, my Dad and my family."

Friday's dinner at the Beaumont Club was Derry's first date with many local diners, and one of the reasons the executive chef/partner of the much-lauded restaurant Private / Social was reticent to release the four-course menu before guests arrived.

"I didn't want to people to say, 'What an oyster po'boy? Why did I pay $69 for an oyster po'boy?'," Derry said. "Tonight I want people to say, 'Wow, what is this?' when they see the plate."

Private / Social, located in uptown Dallas, has been open 14 months. It's earned a good reputation for its sleek decor, party atmosphere, red-hot mixologist and Derry's sophisticated soul food.

Friday's pop-up menu was free of any of Private / Social's Asian inspirations, including Derry's popular Top Chef Pork Buns and sushi rolls. Did the Ozen High School graduate worry that her city food might not go over with the diners here?

"You gotta figure that out," she said, but assured, "I know what works. I believe in making food memories. Dishes that take you back to another place."

As for her Beaumont concept, don't expect a second Private / Social.

"Whatever I open here has to have a Beaumont feel. I can't do Private/Social here. I charge $150 for this menu," she said, motioning to the pop-up menu. "I'm charging $69 tonight."

At 5 o'clock Friday, Derry's army of family and friends are mobilized. Her mother Louisa Austin and grandmother Angela Henry are at the front of the house, greeting guests. Even strangers get a warm hug. In a nearby corner, Derry's father, Lloyd Austin, plays the sax. He's part of a two-man band that will perform throughout dinner service.

This night, uncles are servers, aunts are food runners and cousins are handling the bread service and clearing plates.

Derry puts a strip of double sticky tape across a long prep table that will become the evening's command center as the first ticket comes in. Ditto the first of the frantic questions from the staff: "Where's the special ice tea?"

"Our first table," Derry announces, taking a deep breath.

One of Derry's aunts eagerly awaits the first dish: an amuse bouche that's described cryptically on the menu as "fried greens." It's a fat wedge of crispy fried green tomato with a shrimp-dotted remoulade and a smattering of micro greens. The tart green tomato with its crunchy-gives-way-to-plush texture is just the type of "mouth pleaser" a diner might expect from Derry's comfort food repertoire.

"Do you know all the table numbers?" Derry asks her aunt.

Derry inspects the first plates. "That is too much sauce," she tells one of the four line cooks. "Make it taller," she says to another. "Come on Brandi, where's my salads? I need them. You're already dragging and we haven't even started yet."

"Chef we have a problem with the meringue," a somber-faced pastry chef says. "It's already deflated."

One of the evening's early guests was Ron Lackey of Beaumont. Lackey dined solo at a table just outside of the kitchen. Lackey joked that his wife, away in Temple, was jealous of his last-minute dinner plans. The pair dined at Derry's Private/Social in Dallas on Valentine's Day earlier this year. "It was real good and then Tiffany came out and made a big deal of us. And that's was nice because she's a big deal, a celebrity," Lackey said, adding that the evening concluded with a photo with Derry in her kitchen. "She's a helluva chef."

As for Friday's meal, Lackey said, "It was all good. I especially liked the fish."

The fish was Derry's second course. Billed as Crispy Striped Bass, the shiny slab of pan fried fish was perched atop a snappy pepperoni stew studded with crispy rounds of salami. Shaved fennel and flecks of coriander made the plate a rustic party.

This night Lackey didn't get as much face time with Derry but he did manage a smile and wave as he poked his head into the kitchen's back door.

Jowanna Cheatham, another of the early diners, said she learned about the dinner through Facebook. "I'm interested in cooking," the 33-year-old said. "I don't know (Derry) personally, but she's an inspiration."

Cheatham hung just outside the kitchen, clutching a glass of ice tea ("everything was great but I love the tea") and waiting to get a word with the chef. Overwhelmed by the chaos of the scene, she retreated.

The evening was filled with diners who weren't quite as meek.

Minutes later, a plate headed for the dining room crashed to the floor just as five well-dressed diners stormed the kitchen. One woman, teetering on tall heels, squealed when she spied the Top Chef contestant. Poring over a line of tickets, Derry straightened and turned to greet the women with a big smile. "How many photos do you need," she teased one of the camera-phone toting diners. The kitchen was at capacity: star struck diners, harried food runners, a dishwasher juggling a rack of wine glasses.

Two hours into dinner service and Derry hasn't left the kitchen -- much to the consternation of the staff and, in particular, her husband Mark Mitchell. The diners are paying top dollar to see a Top Chef.

Derry's uncle and server Denny Johnson asks his niece to step outside the kitchen to speak to one of his tables. It's eight members of the pastor's Antioch Baptist Church in Call. It takes nudging from Derry's mother to finally get the chef into the dining room. Thanks to fireworks of camera flashes, it's not hard to track Derry's whereabouts in the dimly lit dining room.

When she returns to a slammed kitchen.

"Y'all need to refocus. And get these tables right," Derry scolds.

At 8 p.m., a cook is dispatched to the grocery for sugar and baguettes.

"Don't write everything you see. None of these people have worked together," Mitchell tells a kitchen observer after a few tense moments for the haggard staff. "I'm Chef Ramsay," he says, likening his mood to the infamously blustery celebrity chef.

"Yeah, you're Chef Ramsey who doesn't know what he's doing," Derry says, teasingly, and still bent over a dozen tickets.

The orders seem to never stop. Derry doesn't lose her composure, but she never stops giving instruction either.

"Can you not slam my plates down."

"If they're having wine, give 'em some extra."

"We gotta stay calm till the end. Freaking out does nothing."

"You can't cook fish in a burnt pan."

Outside the Beaumont Club, Bruce and Katherine Walker and Pam and Jimmie Lewis, all of Beaumont, stand on a corner recounting their dining experience. Katherine Walker gives good marks to the oyster po'boy salad with its super crispy oyster and salad of pickled cauliflower and butter lettuce. Sierra Club members, the Lewis' point to Derry's embracement of the sustainable seafood as part of the chef's appeal.

Bruce Walker has a critique of the meal. He wasn't a fan of the Swiss chard that was served with the meat course.

He is referring to the third course, Pork-n-Beans, which plays like a tribute to the farm. The earthy base is black beans that have been cooked with sausage, bacon and vegetables. A chunky column of pork belly, standing at attention, gets a cap of citrus-spiked apple chutney. Little logs of Swiss chard and tomato confit -- cherry tomatoes roasted slowly in fat -- add a punch of color and acidic sweetness.

By 10 p.m., the third course is going out to the last seating of the evening's 250 diners and the desserts are plated and ready to go.

On the menu, the dessert is S'mores. On the plate, it's a generous square of a dense, rich -- and surprising moist -- chocolate cake. It floats on a scorched meringue island, accompanied by caramelized banana and topped with pecans.

Now was the cooks' time to taste the dishes.

Ashley Pitts, a junior enrolled in Lamar's Culinary Arts program, assisted the pastry chef for much of the evening and she finally was getting a taste of the cake. Pitts volunteers for a lot of culinary events but this night was special.

"It's different," she said, adding that most of her experience was for catered affairs. "This is more like a real restaurant. I'm having a blast."

"It's the experience of a lifetime," Pitts said. "I mean, (Derry) is from Beaumont. She's famous, but she doesn't act like a famous chef."

As the evening winds down, nieces and nephews are drooping. There are complaints of hunger and worn feet. But Uncle Johnson has gotten a second wind. He gestures towards the gaggle in the kitchen.

"Tiffany's family is here for her," Johnson said. "She hasn't forgotten her family. She hasn't forgotten her church. She hasn't forgotten her Lord. She know's what is important: family."